Kenyans have until 5pm today to submit their memoranda to the Clerk of the Senate by post, hand delivery or email.
The window for Kenyans to submit views on a Bill seeking to establish the first comprehensive legal framework for public participation closes today, Monday, September 28, at 5pm.
The Public Participation Bill, 2025, which has already been considered by the National Assembly and is now before the Senate, seeks to set common rules on how government institutions, Parliament and other public authorities should engage citizens when making laws, policies and other decisions requiring public participation.
The Senate Standing Committee on Justice, Legal Affairs and Human Rights invited written memoranda on the Bill, which was read for the first time in the Senate on September 8.
The proposed law would require responsible authorities to notify the public about participation exercises, provide access to relevant documents and allow “reasonable time” for submissions.
It also provides for different methods of notifying the public and requires participation processes to be accessible.
People attending or conducting public participation forums would be expected to be courteous, respectful and civil.
What would change?
The 2025 Bill differs in several important respects from the Public Participation Bill, 2024.
Under the 2024 law, members of the public were given at least 21 days from the date of a notice to submit comments on a proposal.
The 2025 Bill instead does not issue definite timeline but requires authorities to allow reasonable time, without prescribing a minimum number of days.
The earlier Bill also required an accounting officer to make each proposal, together with a summary of information submitted by the public, publicly available in an easily accessible format.
The 2025 version instead requires the responsible authority to publish the outcome of the participation exercise.
Another significant change is the removal of the proposed Office of the Registrar of Public Participation.
The 2024 Bill had envisaged a Registrar who would issue a certificate confirming that a public participation exercise had complied with the law.
That office and the proposed certificate of compliance do not feature in the 2025 Bill.
The Bill instead places responsibility for participation on designated authorities and allows public institutions to develop specific guidelines, provided they comply with the general requirements in the law.
Such guidelines would have to be published in the Kenya Gazette.
For Parliament, the proposed law provides that when one House has conducted public participation on a Bill, a committee in the other House may rely on that exercise or seek additional views where substantive amendments have been made.
It also provides for joint participation exercises between parliamentary committees and measures to avoid duplication.
Why the Bill matters
The proposed legislation comes against a background in which public participation has repeatedly been tested in court, partly because there has been no single statute setting out detailed procedures for how the constitutional requirement should be implemented.
Parliament's digest of the Bill says this absence has contributed to multiple lawsuits and judgments concerning the adequacy of public participation.
The Supreme Court has previously held that public participation must be real and meaningful rather than a mere formality, while also recognising that the method and extent of participation may vary depending on the circumstances.
The Bill seeks to translate such constitutional principles and judicial guidance into a statutory framework.
If enacted, the law would therefore provide a statutory reference point for citizens and public institutions when questions arise over whether a participation process was properly conducted.
Kenyans have until 5pm Monday, September 28, to submit their memoranda to the Clerk of the Senate by post, hand delivery or email.
The memoranda may be submitted to the Clerk of the Senate, P. O. Box 41842-00100, Nairobi, hand-delivered to the Office of the Clerk of the Senate, Main Parliament Buildings, Nairobi or emailed to clerk [email protected] and copied to [email protected]
